Cod Fillet Wrapped in Bacon with Simple Salad

This is an incredibly simple dish, which I prepared with the second half of the bargain cod fillet I obtained yesterday. For those who are wondering why I am cooking with cod when I am advocating, "The Big Fish Fight," campaign, full details can be found in yesterday's post. Essentially, however, my supermarket had sold out of the allegedly cheaper cuts of fish when I visited and I instead had to, "Settle," for a beautiful, bargain priced piece of cod.

Ingredients per Portion

1/2lb fillet of cod
2 rashers of bacon
4 lettuce leaves
6 cherry tomatoes
6 slices of cucumber
1 clove of garlic
3 large basil leaves
1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
Salt and black pepper
Little sunflower oil for baking

Method

For this recipe, the skin should be removed from the cod fillet, prior to cooking. You could of course ask your fishmonger to undertake this procedure for you but it really is not difficult, provided you use an appropriate knife and follow some simple instructions. Rather than try to describe the technique, I have included a short video below which shows the process carried out. The fish in the video is salmon but the procedure is identical for cod. Click on the arrow in the centre of the screen below to play the video.



When you have finished, you should be left with something like this:

You will see that this particular fillet is not of uniform thickness. What I simply did was tuck the thin flap over the main body of the fillet, before wrapping it carefully in the two rashers of bacon. A little sunflower oil should then be placed on a large sheet of foil and the package wrapped loosely but securely. Put it on a baking tray and in to the oven for 20 minutes at 375F/190C/Gas Mark 5. (Oven should of course be pre-heated.)

The salad can be prepared while the cod and bacon is cooking. The lettuce and basil leaves should be roughly chopped and the tomatoes and cucumber slices halved. The garlic clove should be peeled.

Place the extra virgin olive oil in to a small bowl and grate the garlic in to it. The rest of the ingredients should simply be added, along with some seasoning, and carefully stirred.

When the bacon and cod is ready, the salad should be spread on a plate, the bacon and cod sat on top and a final sprig of basil added as a garnish.